Unique in Almodovar’s filmography in that it was based on a novel (by British crime novelist Ruth Rendell) and unusual in that he worked with other writers on the screenplay, Live Flesh (1997) seems to be put into one of two categories: The response is either that it’s lesser Almodovar, or that it’s a sign […]

If this first film from the highly-publicized FoxFaith Films is any indication of what to expect from the fledgling branch of 20th Century Fox, the first thing that comes to mind about the company is a line from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — “And he took the faithful. That’s all, he just […]

The earliest film in the Viva Pedro! series, Matador (1986) is also one of his strangest concoctions. Mixing just about every genre imaginable, Almodovar here serves up a bleakly comic tale of voyeurism, rape (well, borderline), murder, religious fanaticism, death fixations, clairvoyance and just about anything else that crosses his mind. Needless to say, it’s […]

Though flawed in a number of areas — mostly concerning its depiction of the Red Chinese, which rarely gets beyond the level usually associated with WWII propaganda movies and their characterizations of Nazis — Lewis Milestone’s Pork Chop Hill (1959) is in many ways the first modern war film. Produced by star Gregory Peck as […]

Few films are sufficient in themselves to make me think that I should perhaps go back and rethink a filmmaker’s entire oeuvre, but Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is one of those few. I’ve never doubted Scorsese’s importance as a major filmmaker of the modern era, but, The Gangs of New York (2002) to one side, […]

The Law of Desire (1987) is Almodovar’s first full-fledged masterpiece — a bold, daring work that is as shocking and impressive today as it was nearly 20 years ago when it was first released. It also offers the sense of being the filmmaker’s most personal film, since its protagonist, Pablo Quintero (Eusebio Poncela), is, like […]

This latest entry in the psychotic inbred hillbilly sub-genre earns a star for making a vague attempt at returning the Chainsaw Massacre franchise to the kind of socio-political underpinnings of Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and its sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). (OK, so maybe that star has a little […]

Though undoubtedly indebted to Les Belles de Nuit — Rene Clair’s 1952 film about a young man whose dream life invades his waking one — Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep is the most strikingly original film to hit movie screens this year — or any other year for that matter. Let that serve as […]

Having won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 1979, The Tin Drum went on to achieve an extra jolt of fame — or notoriety perhaps — when it was banned in Oklahoma on the grounds of indecency (a ruling that was subsequently overturned). It’s not hard to see either point of view (though […]

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) is probably Pedro Almodovar’s most completely accessible film — certainly it’s one of his funniest and most popular works. More comedic in tone than the films that precede it — the dark (sometimes pitch black) side of his world is here only suggested. It’s the perfect […]

It hasn’t been very long since I reviewed All About My Mother (1999) for a special showing of the film, and the best I can do without repeating myself is to direct readers to the Xpress online movie review archives on the Web site. I will note, however, that I had not seen Almodovar’s The […]

I couldn’t make it through Facing the Giants in one sitting. The first 45 minutes were quite enough to satisfy me that it was pretty awful. I did, however, go back the following day and watch the rest of it. That didn’t help. I freely admit that my problems with the film are partly due […]

No, Open Season is not a whole lot more than what threatens to become Computer Animated Movie of the Week. It has no more substance than most such movies, and when it slaps the 20-year-old Talking Heads song, “Wild Wild Life,” on the soundtrack, the sense of throwing a bone to the adults in the […]

School for Scoundrels is to the art of film what processed cheese food is to fine dining. It takes some standard ingredients, mixes them and comes up with a product that bears a vague resemblance to a movie. Rather than create anything new — and I’m not talking about the fact that this is (barely) […]

I approached this documentary with some trepidation — thinking it was likely to be yet another well-meaning, but not very persuasive issue-oriented film — but Pamela Yates’ State of Fear isn’t “yet another” anything. This is a singularly impressive — and disturbing and important — work that carries an emotional punch. It also carries with […]

Talk to Her (2002) was the first Almodovar film I reviewed for the Xpress, and while since then I have come to a far greater appreciation for his other works than stated in that review, my enthusiasm for Talk to Her as a magnificent and daring film has not lessened. With this film, Almodovar pushes […]

With The Flower of My Secret (1995), Almodovar comes perilously close to making a straightforward soap opera in the grand 1950s Hollywood tradition — or as straightforward as Almodovar can be. If the film had come from almost anyone else, it would be considered at the very least slightly bizarre. For Almodovar, however, it’s surprisingly […]

Heavy-handed, pretentious and weighed down by a spectacularly strange central performance, Steven Zaillian’s All the King’s Men is ultimately a failure. However, it’s the kind of admirable failure that’s worth seeing for what it tries to do — and for what it sometimes accomplishes. It’s certainly nowhere near the artistic disaster it’s been painted as. […]

In one of his more mainstream efforts, indie darling John Sayles tackles the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal when eight (or six, depending on who you believe) members of the Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the World Series for financial gain. It’s one of the major events in the history of the sport and the […]

Ah, Paramount Pictures! Think of it — it was once the most sophisticated of all movie studios, home to such giants of film as Josef von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian, all of whom did their best work there. The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields and Mae West shone brightest during their tenures at Paramount. […]